Lottery is a popular form of gambling in which people have an opportunity to win money or prizes based on the drawing of numbers. It has been around for centuries, although winning a large sum of money through the lottery is much more recent. People play the lottery because they hope that if they could just hit the jackpot, all their problems would disappear. This hope is not founded on wisdom, but rather a covetous desire for money and the things that it can buy. The Bible forbids covetousness: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, or his wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that is his. For the life that is in them is more than enough for him” (Exodus 20:17-18).

The lottery is a classic example of the failure of public policy making to take account of its effects on the real world. When governments decide to adopt a lottery, they typically do so by arguing that it is an effective source of painless revenue and will allow the government to avoid raising taxes or cutting other services. This is a powerful argument, especially in times of economic crisis, but studies show that the popularity of state lotteries is not linked to the state’s objective fiscal health.

Once established, lottery games develop their own constituencies of convenience store operators (who sell the tickets); suppliers of services such as video poker and keno (heavy contributions to state political campaigns by these suppliers are regularly reported); teachers (in states in which lotteries are earmarked for education); state legislators who become accustomed to a steady flow of taxpayer dollars; and the general public itself, with surveys showing that 60% of adults play at least once a year. As a result, few, if any, states have a coherent “lottery policy.”

But lottery games are not without costs. One of the biggest is that they have a detrimental impact on lower income groups, who tend to be disproportionately represented among those who play them. In addition, the mathematics of probability shows that people who play lotteries cannot be considered to be maximizing expected value, because their ticket purchases cost more than they are likely to gain in terms of actual winnings. Nevertheless, many people continue to purchase lottery tickets because they enjoy the entertainment value and the fantasy of becoming wealthy. If these benefits are taken into consideration in a decision model, then lottery participation can be rationalized according to expectations of utility maximization. But if these benefits are not weighed against the costs, then the practice may need to be reconsidered. This is a question that every state should ask itself. Currently, 37 states and the District of Columbia have state lotteries. New Hampshire pioneered the modern era of the state lottery in 1964.